Awake Again
by issachar-san
Summary: Cherenkov is brought back to life. Set slightly before the end of Xenosaga: Episode I


Awake Again

He'd always imagined his death to be a little more violent than this.  
More fire.  
More explosions.  
More blood and the sounds of other people dying around him.  
More hot earthy smells.  
More crying and screaming and pain.

Pain.

He almost imagined himself into it as he sat on the beach.  
The tranquil grey sea moving in and out and the clean air were almost the polar opposite of his other death.  
His soldiers' death.  
Margulis would have called it his 'glorious' death.  
Whatever Margulis found so glorious about screaming and pain was beyond him at this point.  
Cherenkov had never seen Margulis in the thick of a skirmish with no one to help him, nothing but his gun and his wits, sometimes without the gun or the wits.  
Margulis seemed like he had been born an officer, but at his age, still being able to call war glorious after having seen so much of it was particularly gruesome. Bordering on offensive.

The sea had nothing to say to his musings, and he didn't expect it to.  
He supposed that this was the real end of it now.  
Shion had faded away (had he sent her away or had she been pulled?) and all he could remember for the past hour (or was it an hour? Was time even applicable in this place?) was the motion and sound of the sea.

After so much planning, so many things being dependent on him and on his being in a certain place at a certain time, doing a certain thing, making sure the defenses worked, and that they could get away from the Gnosis, all the pain he felt and all the pain he'd caused...all of it was finally over. After weeks of feeling the Gnosis' hatred down his back and dreaming about his wife coming to rip his insides out, it had finally happened. Not literally of course, but he felt it in his heart. All of his insecurity and rage, everything that he had tried to keep anyone from seeing, including Margulis, was suddenly thrown into the spotlight and he was turned into the worst of himself in front of people he hardly knew.

No one had been there dying by his side, friend or foe.  
Nothing he had been working toward had mattered, and if he had survived, he would have been too embarrassed to explain anything.

The sea had seen all of this, and still acted the same as it did for everyone else.  
The tide moved in and then out, in and then out, no matter what was done.  
It understood.  
The Commander smiled and closed his eyes to listen to the sound.  
When he opened them again, his eyes felt heavy.  
Trying to lift his head up and stay awake in a world he didn't want to play in anymore seemed like a chore.  
There was no one there but the sea to judge him, and the sea did not judge, so he leaned back and put his head on the grass, letting his legs stretch out, and closed his eyes.

---

chaos stood in silence as the Commander faded out. Nephilim walked up behind him.  
"What do you intend to do?"  
chaos shook his head. "He's tired. Let him rest for now. We have other things to attend to at the moment."  
Nephilim nodded.

---

Constriction.  
"Being confined no longer bothers me."  
_I'm sorry, Commander._  
Erasure.  
"I am already gone."  
_There has to be something you cared about in this world._  
Sadness.  
"Don't worry about me."  
_That's not quite fair, Commander._  
We need you.  
"Nobody needs me."  
_That is an unfair assumption._

It was then that he opened his eyes again.  
Opened them in anger.  
Everything he saw was a glaring gold blur and a slightly darker blur standing before him.  
He thought he recognized that shade of gold, but his mind was still reeling from being brought back around.  
He tried to lift a hand up to shield his eyes, but it seemed to be cemented to something.  
Blinded and trapped again, he started to panic.  
The darker shape in front of him repeated his phrase: "That is an unfair assumption."  
"H-How would you know?!"  
"Don't try to struggle, Commander, please..."chaos implored.  
Cherenkov winced and bent his head to try and get away from the light that surrounded him. Even when he closed his eyes, he saw red through his eyelids unless he squeezed his eyes tighter. He blinked again, trying to make out something in the brightness. "I know…your voice… You're one of Shion's friends?"  
chaos nodded. "Yes."  
"I didn't mean to hurt her. I wish I didn't have to. I wish I'd never been made to go after KOS-MOS. I wish I'd never been assigned to the Woglinde. I wish I'd--"  
"It's all right, Commander. Those things have already been done. None of us can change them now. Please relax."  
Cherenkov took a deep breath and blinked rapidly, trying to get a grip on his surroundings. The air was neither warm nor cold, but a chill ran up his spine as he recognized why this particular shade of gold seemed so familiar to him. "Th-the Emulator?!" He tried to move his hands again, but they wouldn't budge. He looked down at them with his slowly clearing vision and saw that his arms were assimilated in at the wrists with a crystalline structure. He knew his hands still existed beneath it, but he couldn't feel them. He also couldn't feel his legs. His torso was submerged up to his ribcage. He felt himself turn pale "Oh my God..."  
chaos walked beneath where he had been encased. "I'm sorry if this imagery is upsetting. There are a lot of people who wanted to see you in pain. This is the best way I could manage to extract you." Where chaos stood was about a meter below him. He put his hands on the hard crystalline surface, muttered something under his breath. A great crack ran up it, freeing one of Cherenkov's hands. "I'm not allowed to do anymore than this, Commander, I'm sorry. You can break through if you try."  
"No! Wait, please!"  
Of course, he was already gone.

As chaos faded away, Cherenkov tried to bend down to reach for him, but his hand didn't reach that far and he found that his back was also integrated into the structure. He pulled his arm back and looked around at what could be nothing else but the inside of the Zohar Emulator Margulis had been so intent on sending him to collect. For all intents and purposes, it was the emulator that had caught him. As his eyes adjusted to the light of it, he sat and wondered how long after he had been dragged to the Cathedral Ship that he had stopped caring about getting back to Margulis. As he looked down, between the layers of glowing gold, he saw the red character that had emblazoned the front of the emulator in reverse. _No_, he thought, rather despondently,_ I'd given up almost as soon as we got you onto the Woglinde_.

Like the sea, the emulator itself was silent, except for an almost ambient low-toned pulse that came from deep beneath where he had surfaced. Cherenkov could feel his left hand, lower body and back trapped beneath the surface, and became awkwardly aware of the fact that he wasn't wearing anything. It made sense that his body had been gone, but he'd never thought that it would rematerialize in this circumstance…or at all. It made him feel vulnerable even though he was alone. He contemplated going back to sleep again. That maybe this was a mistake and that if he closed his eyes again, everything would be as it had been on the beach. He closed his eyes and tried to make himself comfortable, but he had started to be seated a little bit off-kilter when chaos cracked whatever it was that he was encased in. It was silent except for the pulse for a few minutes, but as Cherenkov began to relax, he started hearing voices within each pulse. Familiar voices, unfamiliar voices, talking about him, talking to him, about things that had already happened, things that hadn't happened yet, started flashing rapidly in his head.

"Traitor. You are less than nothing to me now."  
"Did you really hope to pass on that abnormal DNA of yours?"  
"Commander…what happened to the Commander?!"  
"_Garbage_."  
"I don't care where you throw him as long as you don't kill him. We need him alive to--"  
"Prepare for the operation."  
"RICHARD! HERMANN! AFTER HIM!"  
"I'm sorry, Commander…"  
"…should be tied up, not talked to like a human being!"  
"Take your meds or I'll be held responsible."

Cherenkov winced and hunkered down. He put his free hand over his ear, but it did no good. The voices were coming from inside him. He could feel the cracks in the resin-like zohar material start to vibrate and crumble from the brittleness imposed upon it by chaos.  
_Escape, Commander!_ came chaos' voice from behind him.  
He wasn't able to turn to look behind him. His back was still cemented in at his spine.  
_There have been worse things than this that you've survived. Get away from this hurt. You deserve to_, chaos continued. The zohar emulator shuddered again and another great crack ran down around him from the back. Cherenkov flexed his forearm to try and free his other hand, all the while the voices racing through his head more aggressively and faster.  
"…a failure."  
"Don't go! Please don't go!"  
"I'm sorry…"  
"Deliver unto me, proof of your existence."  
Grinding his teeth and pushing as hard as he could, he finally forced his other hand free. Amber splinters of crystalline material broke off and went flying everywhere. A large portion below his hands was knocked loose and he now saw a large crack in the emulator in front of him, leading to the outside. He pulled at his back to get free and was able to get his neck vertebrae, but he was still trapped from his shoulders on down. The emulator was pulsing quite rapidly now - pulsing energy. Bolts of lightning were starting to zip along the outside of the crack in front of him. "I've just gotten over…the worst of the worst." He reached out a hand to touch the surface and got shocked and thrown back. Searing pain coursed through him, but the impact of being thrown back had loosened him, and he could now feel the rest of his body now that it was in pain. The voices still ran through his head.  
"RESTRAIN HIM BEFORE HE--"  
He had managed to break his back free of the hard crystalline resin, but something was still attached to his back that he couldn't see. With a roar, he threw himself forward at the crack and a good square meter of it shattered. Cold, environmentally controlled air rushed in. Oxygen.

Oxygen.  
_  
You're almost there, Commander!_

Cherenkov had braced himself against the inner wall and was taking in the harsh air. It made him feel alive again. "Oxygen is good."  
With his head still down, he started to slide his hand up the once perfect, polished, cracked surface of the emulator. As he did, he felt something pierce through his collarbone. He opened his eyes in terror to see the shrapnel re-forming back up through where it fell, re-assimilating itself, trying to wrap itself back around him again. "You can't keep me locked up anymore!" He struggled to get free again, but smaller strands started to spin around him like cloth, wrapping him up again. Then the perimeter alarm started to go off.


End file.
